Apocalypse After Us

There are loved ones in the glory,
Whose dear forms you often miss;
When you close your earthly story,
Will you join them in their bliss?

“So what you feel, sir,” Lieutenant addressed me that way out of respect, not rank, “how many stripies are there?”

“Three infantry companies at the very least. One armoured as well.”

“Isn’t it a lot to defend a sorry amusement park?”

“For a park, a lot. For a feeder base, not enough.” I put the binoculars away. “Use laces, knives, or gun-butts. I guess you know how it is done.”

“Yes. Let’s move,” Lieutenant ordered.

We made our way down the grassy hill, our guts cautiously pressed to the ground. Skulking in the tall grass plants, we slid along the railway line. The weather was to our favour: the night was foggy and moonless.

We were the first shot that soon would turn into the Equestrian Army’s full-scale advance. It was high time to drive the stripies off our land. We had already retaken Old Appleloosa; the rest of the South was the next step.

Before the war, Wild Appleloosa was a good place. There was a huge open-air amusement park that had been operating all around the clock. When the war started, they’d closed the park and built a lot of barracks, warehouses and stuff.

The old park was still there though, and we were moving from the railway to it. They had given us the orders to capture a prisoner to interrogate, a radio boy of the stripies, who must have all the cyphers and frequencies for their waves. If the HQ knew what the enemy was going to do, the losses from our side would be much less.

Nopony would save us if we failed.

In the joyous days of childhood,
Oft they told of wondrous love,
Pointed to the godly Empress;
Now they dwell with Her above.

“Turney, what’s the time?” Lieutenant spoke quietly to the other sergeant.

“Five minutes to three, sir,” he whispered back.

“We don’t have time to wallow. Anypony saw the tower through the fog?”

I pointed to the outline of a two-storey building. “They’re in the administration quarters. The park was managed from there.”

“So we gotta cross the street and they’re bloody many.”

“Sir—” I said to Lieutenant, “May I?”

“Go ahead, Sarge.”

I’d visited this park a lot with my sister. Even though it had been years ago, I remembered the streets and alleyways rather well. To get to the bank, you should follow either along the street or down a narrow alley previously used as a way in for park workers. The security pony used to make it effectively impossible to sneak in through it, but what it was now as I guessed…

You couldn’t blame the stripies for being asleep. Most likely, last night their general noted on his map that the enemy forces were a hundred kilometres away and took off his trousers for a peaceful nap. We were going to strike them in an hour.

It’s easier to be invisible in dark streets if you’re sneaking up all on your own. Less hooves, less stomping. Less smell. Though each of us soldiers could boast that our noses felt nothing but gunpowder, it wouldn’t be quite true. I’d know the whiff of stripies anywhere…

One pony stood guard in the alley. Luckily, he was drowsing, being aware of what was going on around, but barely able to keep from sleeping. I punched him in the nose with one hoof, the other simultaneously stabbing him in the heart. The raging sandstorm concealed what had happened from the others and swiftly covered the tracks, burying the corpse underneath. I waved to Shank and his pack of five goons to keep up.

“There’ll be bluebirds over…” Lieut was murmuring a song under his breath as I read his lips. He was the last to come in and closed the door behind. A weird, unnatural silence wrapped the wooden shack. “Start searchin’,” he whispered.

But all was quiet. Yes, there was a fierce tempest roiling outside these flimsy walls, but inside it was as if everything had been dead. Shank’s boys began looting the ground floor, making a lot of noise. I stripped my mask off and took a deep breath of fusty air. As much as I wanted to smell anybody other than my posse, their stench was overwhelming. I needed something to help me find the sneaky bastard.

There was nothing personal between me and that Listener. I just needed to hop on the Steel Snake— Ugh, on the train. I’d have to huddle between fresh meat and moonshine for the Horde, but what could I do? It’s better anyway than a few weeks of walking from here to New Appleloosa.

As long as we stayed away from the Horde’s patrols, the way from New Appleloosa to Peatbog would go just fine. I didn’t worry about myself. The most they could do was either butcher and eat me or force me to sweat up down in the mines. But the unicorn would suffer a fate much worse.

She sang really great. It’d be a shame if she wound up dead for no fucking reason.

You remember songs of heaven
Which you sang with childish voice,
Do you love the hymns they taught you,
Or are songs of earth your choice?

These guys wouldn’t be getting to the first floor until morning, so it was worth my while to take care of the place myself. As I went upstairs I found nothing but the fresh corpse of a mare lying on the dirty mattress, and a pile of planks stacked on top of each other like an antenna. A pyramid of pony skulls was laid round the contraption with ‘eternal candles’ inserted in the eye sockets. Not-yet-rotten, torn-off pony legs were nailed to the antenna itself. I stepped around the altar and noticed that inside was what seemed to be a military radio station. Shank needed it to communicate with ‘the gods’ as he’d said so I didn’t dig up the pile. A wire ran out from the aerial ending in a set of broken headphones.

Lieut got upstairs after me. “You found the radio, but where’s the stripie? I don’t see any codes here. Is he carrying them?”

“Most likely. What if he got the fuck out for good?”

“So it means we follow the backup plan,” Lieutenant picked a few bombs from his belt. “We have twenty minutes.”

We had to find the radio operator. I thought I knew where to look. “It’s enough time.”

I approached the bloodied body that was lying on the mattress, belly down. I stopped beside the mare, knelt at her, and gently turned her over on her back.

Her eyes were gouged out, muzzle skinned, belly sliced open to extract something. She’d probably been pregnant.

I sniffed the mare. If my nose were correct, she’d been murdered a couple of hours away. She’d also been fucked quite many times, the last one not so long ago. Her scent would prove useful in catching the local prophet’s odour.

The smell that was similar to the mare’s traced off the corpse. I went to one of the walls I thought of where the trail ended. I tapped it lightly and listened. It echoed with the sound of a hollow.

There surely ought to have been a passway to that closed alcove, but I felt too lazy to look for the right spot. Either way, the shack was dilapidated and did not resist a proper bucking.

There, a room about the same size was hidden. That it was all hung with severed dried heads served as the only difference. The floor was strewn with cut-off faces that somebody had used as masks.

The centre of the room was reserved for candles arranged in a circle with radiating rays. The pony crouched inside and was whispering softly, probably praying. I moved closer to him to see what he was doing with his forelegs.

He was pinning something that looked like a baby foal. I grabbed his neck and dragged him out. “Here you go.”

Shank was already there, standing and attentively staring at the antenna. I shoved the masked fucker ahead; he wore the mare’s face on his muzzle.

Lieutenant looked down at the stripie. “Why seal up a whole room in this building?”

“Maybe they split the room up.”

“Whatever,” Lieutenant walked over to the stallion cowering on the floor. “Chisel, gimme the ax.”

One of Shank’s fighters handed him a woodchopper which hang at his side. They used to chop meat with it.

“Now—” The axe clanked. After the first blow, the pony’s head was still on its place. Blood spattered my boots. “Imma—” After the second blow, it finally came away from the body. “The Lis’ner.”

One broken radio and so much trouble.

Shank clutched at the chopped head and held it above him. I put my gas mask back on.

“Carry me, warriers. Now I rule the world!”

Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, by and by?
Is a better home awaiting
In the sky, in the sky?

The story was not that long.

Even before I arrived in Wild Appleloosa, I had known whom I should be searching for. He was one of the rare few I could agree with at all.

In exchange for the opportunity to shorten the journey and get from Wild Appleloosa to New Appleloosa in a day, I had agreed to snuff a couple of ponies.

Was it so hard to guess?

“You don’t want to say something, Gas?” Dusty put the guitar down. “Why is this Shank or whoever he is so happy? Why are you all in blood?”

I waved her off. This mare didn’t understand a wee bit and kept pestering me with questions.

“Look, you and I are… I don’t know… a team of sorts? I’m just curious what you’re doing, what to expect from you… Is it so hard to even tell me where the fuck you disappeared?”

I snorted.

“Yeah, do it again, I dare you. First you get beat up and then you go behind my back and talk to that idiot about what a great wife I’d make for him… I might be a mare, but I can slap you. And it will hurt, believe me.” She sighed as she picked up her belongings. “You’re not going to tell me what this show-off is all for, are you.”

“The Iron Serpent.”

“Train? It’s still working?”

“Mhm.”

“Oh. A few dead bodies is now a ticket’s cost for a ride?” She marched out along with me. She stopped and glanced at the rusty thing decorated with the nailed-up remnants of ponies and buffaloes in different ways. “Why am I even surprised in the first place?”

Shank’s goons were loading stuff into the cars. As much moonshine as fresh buffalo meat bought at the settlement’s slaughterhouses. She chose to jump into an already loaded car which still held plenty of room for pony passengers.

“Nah, I’m sleeping alone,” she said, stopping me with a light bump on the nose when I wanted to hop in after her. “Go to the other car.”

There were chuckles from behind.

When the train was about to take off, Shank came over running and carrying a guitar. “Wait! Play ‘gain hottie, be dear.”

Shit. Would this day ever end?

I couldn’t see Dusty, but I could smell everything. Every little thing. She was sick. She was tired. She’d spent the whole day distracting the attention of the previous Listener’s fighters by arranging a free concert for them. There were Shank’s wives of course, but judging by conversations all the ponies were pissed the fuck off about their dances.

Yet, Dusty didn’t refuse them.

“There are loved ones in the glory…” Dusty started to sing the old song.